Thought about donation events.

So first off, really sorry if this thread isn't okay, feel free to delete it if so. can't see anything in the rules that says it wouldn't be, so i'm just kinda crossing my fingers here.

So anyways, a thought occurred to me as i watched the latest Urelms campaign (Azveltara Z) on youtube, and saw some pretty heavy donation events come up. Particularly during the 2nd act, in which people donated to close a bunch of doors and prevent people from escaping a massacre. there were similar thoughts in my head about this for the previous campaign, (senate of Deadlantis) and the whole killing Phanto thing. So here's the thing.

It's functionally impossible to prevent a donation event from happening.

As it is, it doesn't matter if 99.9% of us "old Gods" say "no, we don't want this event to happen". it just doesn't matter. all it would take is one old god with enough power / one person with enough money to make it happen, regardless of the wishes of everyone else. to make things worse, from then on the event would always be attributed to happening because of the plural old gods, even if a vast majority were adamantly against it.

But what if that wasn't the case? What if there was a way to prevent a donation event from going off? what if the old gods who say "no" could do something about it? Mainly what i'm getting at / suggesting here is that there could be two buttons when donating for an event, similar to the "yay" or "nay" of a divine decision One would be to push the progress bar forward, while the other would be to push it back down. So if Jimmy donated five dollars to the "Kill Deadbone's entire family" event, then Julie could theoretically donate five dollars to negate the progress Jimmy made on the event, making it effectively zero again. i figure each event would have a timer, or an invisible checkpoint that turns them off. So if the event isn't fully funded after so many minutes, or by the time the characters pass a specific location on the map, then it goes away, and those who said no won.

so i can see two sides of this, some with pros, some with cons. The Pros of the mechanic would be that those of us who wish for certain events not to happen have a way of fighting back against those who do. this would also allow for potentially more chaotic games, where it's not clear which way the story will go until time is up or the checkmark is reached. This could also theoretically almost double the amount of income the show makes with just a minor tweak, as two sides of old gods spend their "power" to try and get their way. a one thousand dollar event could easily make two thousand dollars as both sides donate that amount or more trying to cause / prevent the event.

the downsides are of course that the beautiful event animations wouldn't go off, which is always a loss itself. and while i hope the community is better then it, i could imagine some people considering the whole idea a money-grab. I do also worry that it might indirectly cause some boring campaigns or moments, as new mechanics and creatures might not be thrown in like they have been in the past. Perhaps only a select few events could have this mechanic? the fight of Murder Bros Vs the Law had something similar, so the concept wouldn't be too far off.

i don't know, these are just the thoughts of an old Troll with too much time on his hands and a love for the Urelms world. What do you guys think? Again, sorry if the topic is inappropriate, i hope that's not the case.

Comments

You do bring up some valid points But I think this is a REALLY bad idea! There alot more downsides to doing this, for instance people that donate for either may feel that their donations are wasted if what they donated for doesn't happen. "I donated 100 monies for this to happen, and alot of people who threw 5 monies each, made the difference in the final thing and I feel my donation was wasted cause I really wanted that to happen!" There is also a problem with time and timing, if people had the ability to subtract progress from an event, it means that the event will not be able to happen as soon as possible and well, some campaigns need those, id rather they not need them. For example In the infiltration arc of the recent one, the players needed those two donation events so that they wouldn't die and cause a "paradox", as a bit of a safety net so we could see the special tournament.

I did like the murder bros vs buckeroos fight thing. That had two different outcomes and it was awesome, BUT! it was specifically designed for one of two things to happen and thats why it worked so well and why so many people donated for it, they got to cheer for their team and by cheering support their side. Again, way too many downsides to being able to subtract progress from a donation.

I think the badges are meant to point out that even within lore the Old Gods aren't meant to be seen as a monolith. I agree that it's unfortunate that we're often powerless to stop events from finishing, but, at least for events that are revealed prior to the campaign we can always use the forums to try to convince the other Old Gods.

@Gterra2&nbsp;That's the gamble with throwing money into donation events my dude, there is a chance that the donation event you put 100$ into won't get funded (Even though this more or less isn't the case these days, but you catch my drift).

There really isn't a way to stop this from happening though, it's because of the size of the fanbase really, not to say this is a bad thing. I believe that every campaign since Tower of Ultimate Wizardry has had their Donation Events fully funded. For good or for worse, I think the show is as fine as it is.

Exactly. The money just results in nothing. I don't have much money, but I wanna start throwing a little bit of money to the guys. If someone immediately donates against the same event with the exact same amount, I'm gonna dislike said person. Even if they didn't mean to do it, it is human nature to feel insulted when money is wasted. Bonde in the community kinda start to break. @Gterra2

at the same time though i would argue that it may feel like one is wasting their time or effort trying to prevent an event from being funded. many fans may not even visit the forums at all. Allowing fans to pay against the events would let them have a voice and show that it's at the very least not a universal agreement.

Also donation events are made to add to the game/story/comedy in some way. I can not recall ever regretting a donation event going off. Some may argue things like painful twist but seriosly guys if we had not donated for painful twist 1 Rob may have had Gwenyths baby die anyways in a less dramatic fashion, 2 Gwenyth would not be the fan favorite character she is today if she never did half the shit we know her to have done because she was pregnant, and 3 it tells a much better story than the hero got pregnant and had a happy family and the world was perfect for her. I know this is 1 example but donations should always be made for the betterment of the show and giving people the opportunity to stop progress for whatever reason, especially when as @Raynicorn mentioned it would cause a lot of angry people who feel their money was wasted on both sides of the argument.

Would you rather miss out on Six's Lewds and Noods animation? That's my answer to denying donation events. For seriousness, people will feel that their donations was a waste and possibly even demand a refund because they didn't like what had happen. Also, people would see the donor's name and it could start a witch hunt and the community become toxic if someone doesn't follow the majority. One of the reasons why I love the donation events is that it could change on a single person's whim, ie Senate of Deadlantis. Nobody wanted to donate for Deadbone's family dying, but someone threw down huge amount of cash and chat blew up.

but that's just the thing, everyone could have done something about saving Deadbone's family had a mechanic been put in place for it, rather then needing to just sit back and accept that one person with big pockets won over the collective agreement of the majority.

i dunno, i guess i'm seeing it less ass a "boo my money is pointless now" and more of a challenge or a game, with both sides giving it there all to win out over their competition, needing to face and overcome obstacles to get what they want. Both sides would always have losses yes, but that just means that victory would be all the more sweeter when you do accomplish it.

It's certainly the case that on a handful of occasions I have been slightly disappointed that one event happened over another due to the nature of how donation events work, namely the donation event that rips responsibility for Phanto's death from the Beenu and straight to 'The Old Gods' since I personally thought it make the lore of the world significantly less interesting. Of course it's yet to be entirely seen whether or not that event will be expanded upon to give off something satisfying, so I could yet be proven wrong about that, but I digress.

I think the ultimate issue here is that, if you gave people the ability to donate against an event occurring, people will not exactly be happy about the idea that their donations being unimportant. It was one of the reasons the overflow was introduced iirc. From a purely financial perspective it makes perfect sense for Rob to avoid getting contributors riled up as he need that sweet green on the table. Still, it might be nice if there was a way to keep donation events from being almost certain to go off in order to re-inject a bit more unpredictability and randomness into the show once again.

What if you can counter-donate, but the players will have to roll a death-roll and/or maybe a different event instead happens on the next part of the campaign that cannot be stopped and could be even worse.

@Cthulhu and @TamTroll you guys do know that the family deaths from deadlantis were going to happen no matter what all the donation event did was give us a cool cinematic to watch even if not a single dollar was added to that event the families were all destined to die. If anything all those donations did was make the deaths more impactful for the characters back story and more enjoyable to watch as a viewer.

well yeah, but A. that's not really what we're talking about here, and B. they would have just died in the ship crash, a less-painful death overall because we wouldn't have been the cause of it and they wouldn't have died in front of DB's eyes.